


How To Bond In A Snowy Wasteland

by Zaffie



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Extended Mission, Forced Hike, Gen, General Snowiness, Missing Teammembers, Skye Hates Being Cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a mission goes south (literally) Skye and Ward are left stranded in New Zealand, with nowhere to go and nothing to eat. They're in serious danger of hypothermia and frostbitten noses, and Skye claims she's facing death by excessive blisters. Can Coulson and the rest of the team find them in time? Or will they argue their way to a frozen end?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Skye Is Remarkably Well-Behaved

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully this will be a multi-chapter fic, and I aim to balance the snarky humour and bonding (my usual style) with at least some form of adventure. Let me know how it turns out!

“Wake up,” Ward says brusquely.

     Skye’s eyes flutter open; she’s lying on the straw mattress in a corner of the room, and she stares blankly at Ward bending over the fireplace. “Do we have to walk again?” she asks eventually. Ward just nods, without even looking at her. She’s still half asleep, so she whines a little bit. “I have blisters the size of golf balls, robot. _Golf balls_.”

     Ward ignores her, which is something he’s only learnt to do over the past eight days. Before this mission, he would have given her a stern lecture on the importance of walking (and also probably why she should have brought socks on a mission. How was she supposed to know it would turn into an extended hike?) but now he just tunes her out, like she’s an annoying fly buzzing around his ears. Skye honestly isn’t sure which of his attitudes is worse.

     The robot is packing things up, so Skye tumbles out of bed and forces herself to walk into the bathroom and get changed. They’ve been staying in the cabin for two nights, and it had been great, because hello, _actual toilet_ , but now they have to move on. She changes out of the loose t-shirt and shorts she’s been using as pyjamas (both of them Ward’s. Skye is too much of a rookie to bring spare clothes, duh) and pulls on about six layers of clothing. Thermal underwear over her normal underwear, a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of jeans, a woollen jumper, baggy snow suit trousers, and a thick coat with a fur-lined hood. It’s been snowing outside for the past three days, and the biting wind gets everywhere.

     She catches a glimpse of her face in the cracked mirror over the sink. There are dark circles underneath her eyes, and her nose is red with cold. Her hair is curly and tangled. It looks like she hasn’t brushed it for eight days – which she hasn’t. Skye isn’t exactly someone who cares a lot about her appearance, but she isn’t used to looking this unkempt either. It takes her back to days in childhood, before she learnt how to do her own hair. She’d been a scruffy, dirty, waif-like child. She looks back at that time and can hardly believe the confidence she grew up with.

     Ward bangs on the door. “Did you fall in the toilet?” he asks with that deadpan humour.

     “Yeah,” Skye snarks back. “Some idiot left the seat up.”

     “I didn’t,” he responds coolly, completely unflappable. “Come on. We have to go.”

     So she emerges from the bathroom and grabs her boots, which are standing by the door. They were soaking wet from all the snow when she’d taken them off, and now the inside is stiff and scrapes even more against her blisters. She’s just grateful that they’re not heeled boots – they actually are designed for walking, with a grippy sole and thick leather exterior. “Ready?” she asks Ward as she hops around pulling them on, and he nods. The fire is still burning in the grate, which is odd, because she’d expected him to put it out. “Ward?”

     “We’ll leave it,” he explains, carefully not saying what he means. Skye understands, though. They’re going to burn the place down. She sees the couple of moth-eaten blankets that Ward has left trailing from the grate.

     He opens the door and goes out first, cautiously, looking around. The coast is clear, because he beckons her out right after him. Skye takes a deep breath and steps into the cold. It hits her like a punch in the chest, the wind howling into her face. She slits her eyes against it and tucks her arms in close to her body.

     Ward takes out his compass and looks at it, and then he points towards the horizon, where Skye can just see a dark smudge. “That way,” he calls, having to raise his voice slightly to compete with the wind and her thick hood. “It looks like a forest. If we can make it by nightfall, we’ll be okay.”

     She doesn’t really believe him. Spending the night out here sounds like a disaster, and there’s still snow falling from the heavy grey clouds, too. They’re spread across the sky like a blanket, covering everything as far as she can see.

     When they start walking, she notices that Ward is carrying both packs. They’re heavy and huge, probably more than half the length of Skye’s body. Still, she catches up to her SO and grabs one of the straps. “Here, let me help,” she offers.

     “It’s fine,” he tells her, but she shakes her head.

     “No, it’s not. Don’t make allowances for me, Ward. I’m not some weak, wimpy girl who needs looking after. I’m an agent just like you are, so let me pull my weight. Okay?”

     He actually looks impressed, like her speech made some kind of impact. “Okay,” he says, and hands her the smaller of the two bags, holding it while she slips her arms through the straps. “But you’re still a rookie.”

     Skye quirks an eyebrow at him. “A rookie _agent,_ my good SO.”

 

At first, Skye doesn’t notice the way Ward is looking behind him every few steps. When she does, she starts to freak out a little bit, because she’d forgotten that there were people _following_ them, and now she remembers. How could she forget something like that? Her heart races, and it’s not just from the exertion of pushing through the snow. Luckily, she’s always been good at internalising her panic, so Ward doesn’t notice anything. Or, she thinks he doesn’t.

     He stops after what feels like a couple of hours. They’ve been walking the whole time, and Skye’s glad for the break, even she starts to shiver as soon as she stops moving. Ward holds out his hand. He’s done this enough times that Skye knows what it means, and so she gives him her wrist. He takes it gently, folds his long fingers around her forearm and examines her bracelet. They _think_ the team is using it to track them, but Ward says they can’t be sure. He’s worried that the extreme cold on their fifth night out here might have busted the device. It nearly busted Skye’s toes, that’s for sure. She was convinced she was going to get frostbite and have to have half her limbs amputated. And her nose. Skye’s attached to her nose (literally, but also emotionally. It’s a good nose, and it’s been with her through a lot).

     “Is it okay?” she asks Ward. His fingers gloss over her skin, under her sleeve.

     “I can’t tell,” he responds bluntly. “Let’s keep moving.”

     She almost rolls her eyes at him, because it’s such a typical, emotionless-robot reply. He’s just trying to keep them alive, though, and in the past week he’s saved her from two fire-fights and a frostbitten nose, so she’s willing to make concessions.

    

Another solid four or five hours of walking gets them to the trees that she saw this morning, the ones that were a smoky smudge in the distance. Skye’s stomach is growling loudly, but they don’t have any rations left.

     “Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, go hunting or something?” She’s mostly trying to lighten the mood, but Ward looks at her seriously.

     “I’d rather not shoot at anything,” he explains, actually sounding like he’s answering a reasonable question. “The gunshot might be muffled by the snow, but it’s safer not to take chances.”

     Skye tips her head back, so that the hood falls off, and squints into the sun. It’s  moving west, setting slowly. “What time is it?” she asks Ward.

     The taller man follows her gaze. “I’d say two or three hours until nightfall.”

     “We’d better set up some sort of camp, then,” Skye suggests. It’s already getting colder. Her bones are aching with it. She doesn’t want to be here when the sun goes down, but at this point, she really doesn’t have a choice. Neither of them do.


	2. In Which Simmons Reflects On The Various Merits Of Female Friends

If Simmons had to choose the most awful week of her life, it would be this one. Or possibly the one where her grandmother died and she had to travel back to England for the funeral without Fitz. But probably this one. Skye and Ward have been missing for eight solid days, and the south island of New Zealand contains some seriously unforgiving terrain. There aren’t exactly bears or wolves to worry about, but Simmons has been checking the weather forecast for the general area where their mission had turned into a bust, and she isn’t pleased.

     “Look, Fitz,” she says, turning the screen towards him, “this one says there will be a blizzard in the next few days. A _blizzard!_ ”

     “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Fitz tells her without even looking at the screen. “You must’ve gone through hundreds of those weather sites by now, and you’re onto the shady ones that are predicting the wrong stuff. Just calm down.”

     It’s all very well for him to say, she thinks furiously. It’s not her fault that her imagination is overactive and she has the knowledge to picture exactly how Skye and Ward’s frozen bodies would look after eight days of decomposition. In such low temperatures, actually, they’d probably be almost perfectly preserved. She wonders how much of their internal liquids would have frozen, and whether the icy insides would… no. She doesn’t wonder that, not about her _friends_ , who she _cares_ about.

     “What about the bracelet?” she asks instead, moving so that she can look over Fitz’s shoulder at the screen. He sighs in irritation, and she glares at the back of his head, because he’s been so _touchy_ lately.

     “If I’d gotten a clear read on it, don’t you think I would have told Coulson by now?” he asks her crossly. “Just give me some space, okay?”

     “Okay,” Simmons mumbles, and she takes a few paces back and slumps into her seat. Her mind is whirling, and it’s hard to keep quiet for long. “Why can’t you access the bracelet? It should be tracking Skye’s vitals and movements and internet history and everything.”

     “Well it’s not,” Fitz snaps. Simmons shrinks back, because they bicker, but he doesn’t usually get angry with her like this. “I don’t know what, but something is disrupting the signal. I’m trying to figure out a way to fix it.”

     Simmons’ shoulders slump, and she props her chin in her hands. She imagines what Skye is doing at this moment. Her friend is probably bugging Ward, she thinks, and that makes her feel a little bit better. If she’s honest with herself, Simmons knows that she’s missing Skye the most. (It’s unfair favouritism, but there it is.) It’s a completely different dynamic with Skye, who sees that Simmons is female and accepts it. Sometimes, she thinks that Fitz looks at her as a man. Sometimes he accuses her of ‘acting girly’ and she has to refrain from screaming at him because she _is_ agirl! And maybe right now she’s focussing on all of Fitz’s faults because he’s cranky and he’s being mean, but that’s his problem. The truth is, she’s never really had a best friend before who was _female_ (unless you count Sally Potter in Year 5, and she turned into a bully and stole people’s lunch, so Simmons _doesn’t_ count her) and even though she loves Fitz, Skye is just… she gets it.

     There are certain problems that only a woman can understand, and if she goes to Fitz to complain about period cramps, she gets more disgust and half-hearted mumbling than sympathy. If she goes to Skye, though, they can compare symptoms and drink tea, hug hot water bottles and wax eloquent about the absolute uselessness of guys in these situations. It’s not just physical problems they bond over, either. Fitz, while sweet, doesn’t talk about feelings. Simmons doesn’t know why, but she blames testosterone. If she has an emotional crisis, she’s recently discovered that Skye is the ultimate go-to girl. Not only does she have advice and kind words, but she always has hilarious stories about her own past and mistakes, which she’s willing to share with almost no prompting. Nothing is too embarrassing or too personal as far as Skye is concerned, and, for Simmons, it’s a relief.

     She relaxes utterly and completely around Fitz and Skye, and they are the two people in the world she feels the most comfortable with, but her relationships with them both are so different. Before Skye, she’d been content with Fitz and Fitz alone. Now, though, she finds herself missing that added dimension that the hacker had brought to her life. It’s funny, she tells herself, the way you never truly value something until it’s gone.


	3. In Which Ward Is Probably Being More Helpful Than Anyone Gives Him Credit For

Her life has blurred into an eternity of putting one foot in front of the other. Skye stares at the snow beneath her and crunches forward. She tries to walk in Ward’s footsteps (and _Good King Wenceslas_ flashes briefly through her mind) but his stride is too long for her to match. There’s irony for you, Skye thinks bitterly. She can’t follow in his footsteps if she tries.

     “Are you okay?” Ward tosses the question over his shoulder casually, like it means nothing. Maybe it doesn’t.

      “I’m fine,” Skye grits out, although her face is so cold that it’s gone completely numb. To her surprise, her voice sounds thick and heavy. Ward seems to notice it too, because he pauses ahead of her.

     “You sure?”

     “Yes,” she snaps. She keeps walking until she bumps into Ward’s back. Dimly, she registers that she didn’t see him standing there. Is there more snow in the air than there was before? Or is this a bigger problem? Skye has heard of people going snow-blind before. She doesn’t really understand it, but she knows it’s a thing.

     Ward turns around and grabs her arm roughly. She glares at him, because if he wanted to see the stupid bracelet, all he had to do was _ask_. He’s got the wrong wrist, anyway; the stupid dog-tag bracelet is on her right arm. She keeps the haematite on her left, the beautiful ring of black stones that she bought in Auckland before they came down to the South Island.

     “Skye,” Ward says, jolting her out of her thoughts. “Look at me.”

     “Ouch,” she mumbles. His grip is getting tighter.

     Ward grabs her chin with his free hand and tilts it up. Skye scowls furiously, but the anxious look on her SO’s face stops her. “Skye.” He says her name again, quietly. “Your nose.”

     What about her nose? Oh god, it hasn’t fallen off, has it? Skye reaches her hand up to grab at the hole where her nose used to be. Her fingers find flesh, but they also find something hot and wet. She pulls her hand away and sees blood, bright red against her pink glove. The colours clash horribly. “Oh.” Skye’s had nosebleeds before though, so she tells Ward, “It’s fine, don’t worry. It happens to me a lot. The cold probably burst a blood vessel or something.”

     “It’s both nostrils,” he tells her. “It’s a lot of blood.”

     Skye licks her lips and realises why she’s been tasting iron for the last ten minutes. “It will start to clot soon,” she reasons. “No worries.”

     “Were you picking your nose?” Ward asks. His tone is higher-pitched now, and he’s trying to make a joke out of it. Skye can tell. She brushes past him with disdain.

     “Very funny,” she sniffs. “You still need to work on your sense of humour.”

     They’re more-or-less under the trees now. The branches are keeping a lot of the falling snow away, although every now and then one of them will dip down and release a bucket load of slush. The first time this happened, it went all over Ward’s head and Skye was nearly hysterical. When it happened to her, _twice_ , right afterwards, she was less amused.

     “That’s karma,” Ward tells her, and then he frowns at her nose again. “It’s still bleeding. It’s been bleeding for a long time, now, Skye. We should stop.”

     Actually, Skye has been feeling light-headed for several minutes. There are little silver flecks dancing against the white of the snow in front of her. They could be fairies, but she thinks it’s more likely that the blood-loss is getting to her. “You can’t die from a nosebleed, Agent Ward.”

     “You took something,” he remembers. “A couple of hours ago. You had a headache.”

     “So? I took an aspirin.”

     Ward’s eyes flash. Skye sees the knowledge flood across his face. “It’s a blood-thinner,” he says, so fast that his tongue trips over the words. “Damn it, Skye, no wonder it isn’t clotting! We have to stop.”

     “What, here?” She looks around. It’s cold and snowy and damp and… yeuch.

     “Yes, here.” Ward grabs her shoulders and shoves so that her knees buckle and she sprawls to the ground. Blood from her nose splatters the white snow. Blood on white. Much better than blood on pink, she thinks with satisfaction. “Put your head back,” Ward instructs, and then he sits down behind her. “On my shoulder.”

     Skye lets her head tip back until it is resting against him. Carefully, Ward pinches two fingers in brown gloves over her nose. “Ow,” Skye says in a voice which reminds her of Daffy Duck.

     “Be brave,” Ward says stiffly. Skye wonders if the disgust she can hear is because of her cowardice or her blood. Either way, it’s her fault. She wonders who Ward would prefer to have on this mission with him. May or Coulson – definitely. Fitz – probably. Even Simmons. Skye misses Simmons. She tries to imagine Ward talking in an English accent and finds that it makes her feel a bit better, so she pushes his hands away and tries to sit up. She’s at an awkward angle, though, and the snow slips from under her, making her fall backwards and land with her head in Ward’s lap. Like, seriously, in his lap. Awkward.

     “Um, sorry,” she says, looking up at him. He’s frozen, which is probably because her very hard skull is sitting on a rather tender part of his anatomy. Oops. “Do your balls hurt now? My bad.”

     “My _balls_ are _fine_ ,” Ward insists. “So is your nose.” He pushes her off and gets to his feet, dusting powdered snow from his legs and back. “Get up. We need to keep moving; or had you forgotten that there are probably still guards chasing us?”

     He doesn’t say the words _they’re chasing us because you screwed up your job back at the warehouse_ , but he doesn’t need to. Skye hears them clearly. She rises as fast as she can and blinks back tears which she tells herself are just from the pain in her nose.

     “Let’s go, then,” she practically snarls at him, and sets off once more, this time ahead of Ward. It’s harder like this, forging a path through the snow. She’d thought that he was walking in front of her before because he was trying to be in charge. Now she wonders if maybe he was trying to make her life just a little bit easier. If that was all he could do to help.

     She’s taken that job away from him now. Skye doesn’t _need_ his help.


	4. In Which Skye's Brain Sings Ironic Songs From Disney Movies

“We need to stop,” Ward insists.

     Skye ignores him with a combination of anger and stubbornness. She can’t shake the feeling that she’s somehow not _good enough_ to be here with Ward, which is stupid, and it’s filling her with so much rage that she just wants to _scream_. Also, there’s a song from the movie Frozen echoing in her head and it’s beginning to make her feel better about the snow, so she doesn’t want Ward interrupting.

     “Skye,” he presses. “Skye!”

     _Let the storm rage on!_ she sings internally, and firmly tramps forward several more steps. _The cold never bothered me anyway._ It’s time to restart the song from the beginning, but she’s getting tired and the words won’t come. What was it? Something about footprints in the snow. There aren’t any footprints in the snow ahead of Skye, but there are probably plenty behind her. She twists to see, and then somehow she finds herself lying down and looking at the snow much more closely than she’d intended.

     “What?” she mutters, and tries to push herself up.

     “Hey,” Ward says, and that’s when she realises he’s crouching over her. He looks worried. “You passed out.”

     “Oh.” Skye gets ready to stand up again, but Ward stops her.

     “We’ll spend the night here,” he says.

     “Right here?”

     “Yes, Skye.” He glares at her. “You’re pushing yourself way too hard. You have to rest.”

     “I don’t have to do anything!” she argues.

     “Be reasonable!” Ward yells. “It’s going to take us another day to reach the next safe house, and that’s assuming the weather won’t get any worse! I don’t know if those men have given up yet, but if they haven’t, I don’t need you to get sick and slow us down any more than you already have!”

     Ouch. Skye closed her eyes, because she didn’t want to see the disappointment on his face. She knew that she wasn’t doing a good job, knew that she wasn’t a real SHIELD agent, but it really felt like he was rubbing it in. “We’ll camp here,” she mumbles. She hates giving in, so she tries to tell herself that she doesn’t really want to keep moving anyway. She’s too tired.

    

They can’t build a fire, in case they’re being pursued. Personally, Skye thinks that no one would bother to chase them for this long. It’s the end of their ninth day in the snow, and as she climbs into her sleeping sack her whole body is shaking with cold.

     “Are you all right?” Ward asks.

     “Yeah. Why?”

     “I can hear your teeth chattering from here,” he says, and he sounds serious. Skye bites down on her lip.

     She nearly falls asleep like that, but there’s a sharp sting as her teeth suddenly break the skin of her lip, and then as it starts to bleed there’s a hand on her shoulder. Skye jumps, practically out of her skin, until she sees her SO behind her.

     “Jesus, robot!” she grumbles. “What, trying to give me a heart attack?”

     “Be quiet,” Ward whispers in reply. “Go to sleep.” He’s unzipping her sleeping bag.

     “What are you doing?”

     “Ssh,” he hisses, pressing his glove-covered fingers over her lips, and then he slips in behind her and presses his body to hers. “I’m sharing body heat.”

     “Isn’t that the pretext for like, every cheesy porn movie ever?”

     He’s silent for a second. Skye wonders if he’s thinking about porn, and then she hopes he’s not thinking about porn, because he’s pressed really intimately up against her right now. Finally, he says, “Are you ever quiet?” so she says something back like ‘nope’ because she knows he expects it.

     Eventually, he falls asleep, which she knows because his whole body gets slack and limp and he slumps forward over her. He’s heavy, but he’s deliciously warm.

 

Ward packs up the campsite that morning before he wakes her. Today, he takes both packs and pretends he can’t hear her when she protests.

     Skye gives up and follows him, cold and wet and miserable but feeling much lighter. Ward really is cut out to be the protective older brother type. She’s come to realise that over the past several days. He’d probably be a good father too. Skye banishes that thought from her mind.

     The day passes with one foot in front of the other. The sun is setting when they see the safe house, and Skye’s stomach feels like it’s eating itself from the inside. She wants food, damn it! Food!

     “We’ll spend a couple of nights here,” Ward tells her. “The team might be checking these safe houses anyway.”

     “Yay,” Skye says sarcastically. She’s too tired for speaking, really, so instead she takes off her boots and outer clothes at the door and shuffles inside the tiny log cabin. It’s only two rooms, and one of them is a bathroom. Again, there’s a real toilet (which beats having to squat in the snow and freeze her ass off) and… yeah, no shower. Whatever.

     As she heads back into the main room, Ward dumps the packs and starts spreading the sleeping bags out on the floor by the fire. There’s no beds in this cabin, just a hard wooden floor.

     “Take your clothes off,” Ward tells her. “Then get in the sleeping bag while I light the fire. You need to get warm.”

     She would protest, but she’s too lazy. Instead, Skye tugs off her hundreds of layers and throws them on the floor. When she’s in only her bra and underpants, she heads towards the sleeping bag. Ward’s eyes definitely land on her as she crawls inside.

     “Are you staring at my breasts, Agent Ward?”

     He strikes a match in the grate and shrugs. “Probably.”

     Skye grins and snuggles deeper into her sleeping sack. She likes honest men.


	5. In Which Ward Becomes Slightly Less Annoying Than He Was Originally

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, sorry it's been such a long wait for this one! I sort of lost my inspiration for this fic, and then I gained inspiration for lots of other fics, and I got really distracted. But look! Here's another chapter - and it's the second last one! Hooray! Only one (probably short) chapter left before I can wrap this fic up and feel a sense of completion. Ha.

It’s not quite dawn when Skye opens her eyes to find Ward leaning over her and checking her bracelet.

     “What,” she says blearily.

     He twists her wrist this way and that, silently, and then he looks at her. His face is drawn and his lips are pressed together into a thin line. “Skye,” he sighs, “I think it’s broken. There’s no way they can find us using this.”

     “So we stay in the safe house,” she suggests. “Like you said yesterday.”

     Ward nods slowly, but he doesn’t look convinced. “Have you still got the thing?”

     Skye wriggles around in the sleeping bag. The SD card has been sitting inside her bra every day since they grabbed it from the warehouse. It contains the photo evidence that is all SHIELD needs to shut that place down, and they (well, Ward… mostly Ward) have been terrified of the cold damaging the information.

     “I think it’s fine,” she says, pulling it out and examining it and then tucking it back into its hiding place. “We won’t know for sure until we get access to a computer, though.”

     “Okay.”

     Skye closes her eyes again and tries to relax, but she can still feel Ward’s gaze on her neck. She glares up at him. “Are you just gonna sit there and watch me sleep, Robot?”

     He shrugs. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

     He’s sort of whinging, which is unusual for him, so Skye pushes herself into a sitting position and suggests, “Push-ups.”

     “I’m trying to conserve energy, _Skye_.” He says her name scornfully, but Skye ignores him. She doesn’t want to have a fight, and she won’t rise to his bait.

     “Write a book. Write your memoirs!”

     “Is everything a joke to you?” he snaps. Now she knows he’s trying to bait her.

     “Ward, if you’re angry, go and punch something. Don’t try and argue with me.”

     He snarls, like, literally snarls, and storms away from her. Skye watches him pace the cabin for a while before her eyes drift closed again.

 

The next time she wakes up, Ward is gone.

     “Ward?” she calls timorously from her bed. There’s no answer. Suddenly, a desperate kind of panic seems to overtake Skye. She throws off the sleeping sack, barely noticing the cold, and dashes for the door. “Ward!” she screams, pulling it open, but the wind rushes in and tears her words from her mouth. The cold hits her like a sledgehammer, straight in her unprotected stomach, and Skye jack-knifes and bends over double to try and protect herself.

     She should be thinking about other things, like how there’s an important SD card in her bra and she’s not wearing any clothes and it’s freezing out there, but all she can think about is Ward alone in the snow. She doesn’t even stop to realise none of his snow gear is gone – she just plunges out into the howling blizzard.

     It really is a blizzard out here. Barely five paces away from the safe house, Skye turns around and can’t see it anymore for snow. She’s shivering already, great spasms that wrack her entire body, and her bare feet have gone numb, buried in the snow. She’s never going to find Ward out here. Filled with hopelessness, Skye lets herself fall to her knees in the snow. She topples backwards, slowly, and thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to die out here. The snow is like a blanket, and she’s not even shivering that much anymore.

    

Someone trips over her face.

     “Ward?” she tries to ask, but her lips are stiff and swollen and she can’t see anything but white.

     Whoever it is, they pick her up and start carrying her away and suddenly she’s in a place where the wind is gone and she can hear someone yelling furiously at her.

     “…don’t you ever think about anyone other than yourself, Skye, you idiot, what do you think I’m supposed to tell Coulson now?! ‘Oh sorry, sir, I just let your protégé run out into a freaking _blizzard_ and die’? You’re so bloody stupid!”

     He puts her down somewhere that starts off feeling deliciously warm and then quickly becomes way too hot, prickling and burning against her skin. Skye struggles, but her wrists are pinioned in a vicious grip. She hears something snap.

 

When she next becomes aware, she’s lying cocooned in a nest of blankets and her face is pressed into Ward’s bare chest.

     “Whoa, hi,” she says, and tries to pull away.

     Ward’s arms tighten like bands around her back. “Would you _stop_ wriggling?” he says in a low, intense voice.

     “Ward? What’s going on?”

   “You tried to give yourself hypothermia,” he mutters. “You’re absolutely insane.”

     She remembers their battle earlier, and the sound she’d heard. “Oh my god, Ward, did you break my wrist?”

     “What?” he asks. “No!”

     Skye still squirms both hands up to her face so she can see her wrists. The haematite bracelet is gone. “Damn it, Ward, you broke my bracelet.”

     “Well I’m sorry – I was trying to save your _life_.”

     She relaxes, and lets herself sink into Ward’s warmth. “I only ran out there because I thought you’d gone,” she informs him. “I panicked, okay?”

     “You have to learn not to panic,” he tells her, but he sounds a little bit more lenient. “I’m sorry – I was in the bathroom. There are literally only two rooms in this hut.”

     “I yelled for you,” she says, miffed.

     “I didn’t hear.”

     Skye scrunches up her nose miserably, feeling stupid. She asks Ward, “Would you ever leave me?”

     “In a place like this? Never,” he assures her. “You’re still my rookie, no matter how many times you do stupid things and betray the team and annoy me. Understand?”

     “Thank you,” Skye whispers.


	6. In Which Skye And Ward Admit That They've Bonded. Maybe.

 

“Sir!” Simmons calls, dashing desperately through the corridors of the bus.

     He steps out of his office just in time for her to bounce off his suit-covered chest. “Simmons?” he asks, catching her by the shoulders. “Is there a problem?”

     “Fitz found them,” she says, breathlessly. “He found Skye’s bracelet. The signal is back. We know where they are!”

     Coulson takes a second to absorb the information, and then he says, “Tell May,” and strides off to the lab.

     Simmons jogs up to the cockpit, a broad smile spreading across her face.

 

“Skye,” Ward hisses.

     She opens her eyes, sprawled on top of him, and mumbles, “What?”

     “You’re drooling on my chest.”

     “Sorry,” Skye sighs. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and then stops. “Wait, hang on. Do you hear that?”

     Ward’s eyes open wide. “It’s an engine. It’s a plane.”

     “Uh, good plane or bad plane?”

     He shoves at her until she gets off, and then he stands up and grabs for his trousers. “Get dressed,” he tells her.

     “Why? I’m cold.” Skye pulls the sleeping bag back around her.

     “Because if it’s the team, you don’t want to be in your underwear,” Ward says humourlessly. “And if it’s the bad guys then you _really_ don’t want to be in your underwear.”

     “Point taken,” Skye says, and she gets up and starts to get dressed.

     She and Ward are probably staring at each other a little bit more than necessary as they pull clothes on. Neither of them seem to care enough to look away. After more than a week in the snow together, it’s hard to think about modesty.

 

Someone bangs on the door and Ward puts a finger to his lips. Then he holds up three fingers. Folds down one. Folds down another one.

     Skye yanks the door open and a jacket-covered monster lumbers in. Ward puts his gun to their head.

     “Freeze,” he intones.

     “Ward?” the monster asks.

     “Fitz!” Skye says happily.

     “Skye?” Fitz wonders.

     “Skye!” Ward snaps.

     “It’s Fitz!” she tells him, and lurches forward to hug the scientist.

     “Hello, Ward,” Fitz says, pulling the beanie away from his face. “Glad we finally found you.”

     “Me too,” Ward sighs. He slaps Fitz on the back. Fitz winces.

 

They grab their gear and prepare to head out to the bus. Skye is, naturally, the one who trips on the pieces of broken bracelet scattered across the floor. Somehow, Ward catches her and props her back upright.

     “You have amazing robot reflexes,” she tells him.

     Fitz ducks down and picks up a shiny haematite section. “What is this?”

     “It _was_ my haematite bracelet,” Skye tells him. “Ward broke it.”

     The shorter man narrows his eyes, and then he says, “Haematite is magnetic.”

     Ward is ushering them both to the door. “Come on, Fitz,” he says impatiently.

     Fitz stands stock-still. “No, it’s _magnetic_ ,” he repeats.

     “You said that already,” Skye tells him.

     “Magnets screw up electrical signals – particularly signals as delicate as your bracelet. Skye… if you were wearing this the whole time…”

     “Whoa, whoa.” She holds up her hands. “Are you saying that you couldn’t track me because of a stupid _bracelet?_ Made of _rocks?_ What kind of technology does SHIELD even have?!”

     “Get in the plane,” Ward says through gritted teeth. “We can talk about this later.”

 

Skye has four hot baths that evening. Then she has a hot shower, just for good measure. Afterwards, she goes to Ward’s bunk.

     “I thought it would be you,” he says without looking up as she slides the door open. “What is it?”

     Skye shuffles from foot to foot. “I just wanted to say… thanks.”

     “For what?”

     She shrugs. “For taking care of me out there? I know you did, Ward. You spent the whole time arguing with me and trying to save my stupid yet extremely attractive ass.”

     He looks up. “Good description.”

     “Of what? My ass, or your behaviour?”

     “Both.” He puts his book down, and then adds, “It’s what an SO does, Skye. And it’s what a team does too. They trust each other. They help each other.”

     “They bond,” Skye agrees. “We’ve bonded.”

     “No we haven’t.”

     “Yes we have, shut up.” She sits down next to him and says, “I’m sorry. About Miles.”

     “I know that now,” he tells her.

     “It won’t happen again,” she promises.

     He smiles, and says, “I know that, too.”

     Skye stands and prepares to leave. Just before she shuts the door, Ward catches her eye. He winks at her. “Ward?” she whispers.

     “Yeah?”

     “You’re pretty cool.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pun intended! 
> 
> Phew, I cannot believe this story took so long for me to finish! Like halfway through, I just totally lost my confidence, and decided it was a terrible story and I was a terrible writer. And then I said "Don't be such a stupid git, Zaffie, finish the damn story," so I did. Self-talk. Works every time.
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed it! MASSIVE thanks to everyone who left kudos and comments! You're all awesome.


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